April 26, 2019

8.15 am: A communion. 9.00 am: A fast-paced walk to the School to retrieve information vital to the morning’s admin. Next week is the last for undergraduate and MA teaching prior to their final exhibitions. Thereafter, the assess-a-thon would gather pace. There were tutorials to arrange, assessment timetables to finalise, and presentations to confirm. (In the background, Richard Strauss’ Four Last Songs played.) 10.30 am: Tea came early. I’m losing my discipline:

1.30 pm: Studiology. I established the play-list’s order sooner than anticipated, yesterday evening. The initial play-through was encouraging. The album felt coherent, and yet sufficiently varied and extensive in terms of the sonorities, methodologies, and conceptual underpinnings of the compositions it comprises. Some tracks have a few niggles (that I’m convinced only I can hear); and these would be addressed during the remainder of the day. The more demanding task would be establishing a continuity of loudness (which is not the same as volume), tonal colour, and presence across the board. These discontinuities will be reconciled during final mastering. In this respect, the creation of sound works corresponds much more to the processes of photographic exposure and developing than it does of painting.

I listened at moderate, very high, and very low volumes. Each level reveals something that the others don’t. There’re parts of some compositions that, now, I neither remember creating nor know how they were created. 3.00 pm: Having listened to all the tracks in order, and itemised minor changes that a few required, I began to implement the necessary adjustments. But, in advance, and in order to create a space in my head in which to think afresh, I turned to my ‘Beauty’:

It’s always worth persevering with the smallest of minor errors – if only to be able to sleep at night. The tiniest adjustments of a few parts can have a noticeable impact for the better on the whole.

7.30 pm: I continued implementing small, and sometimes somewhat larger than small, changes to those tracks that hadn’t sat comfortably on my ears during the afternoon. The edge of the storm was fast moving towards us. The birds flew eastward:

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